This is fascinating, gang. We must have the spiritual discernment to adjust to where the climate is moving and take our fragrance with us.
Many believers are not this nimble. Instead, they have oversimplified everything. And it is killing their capacity to adapt and overcome (Semper Fi), and ironically their ability to “adapt and overcome” in order to “do or die” is killing them.
So, let’s be ultra-clear. Did I say “we need to revise the standard of Jesus.”? No.
However, are we missing the point in many places because we have neglected parts of the complexity of His love and his principles? Yes.
Taking care of the widows, the orphan, the fatherless, the neighbors. Weaving the principles together is often not our way.
Oversimplified, we say, “just stay in love with Jesus.”
That’s the beginning place. That is the gate to walking toward eternity.
However, there is a path beyond the gate. And that path may include smooth segments, rocky segments, uphill segments, scrambling segments, hunting segments, very technical segments that require all of our faculties and tools to overcome, glacial segments, swimming and diving segments, segments that require you to go back and forth several times and you are confused as to why you cannot just go straight through (acclimatizing segments), and segments where you are under unstable or unbalanced places, and segments where your guides are serving the enemy while being used by God to get you in the presence of His principles, because they unknowingly understand those principles and are responsible to teach you those principles.
In other words, you have to weave, throughout the course of your life, hundreds of principles.
Fear is okay, but complacency with kill you.
-Allison Levine-
We must take our principles and knowledge of our principles and we must weave them together in ways we may have never even them together.
Our environment may be constantly evolving and moving, and so we have to take the unchanging principles and weave them together in a useful fashion.
Hang in there, gang.
Because, you might be on Khumbu Glacier, and your business might be in collapse, and you need to know how to use the market shifts and momentum to push you forward to your goal.
Church workers, you might need to use the changes that you are feeling to thrust you forward.
There are always ways forward.
You’ve got to focus on executing much more than sticking to some plan.
Pam was praying for me today and recalling how everyone was posting about Tyndale’s martyrdom the last few days.
What she did not know is that I was uniquely hammered on the last few days and it was like a different style of attack.
And Father said to her “curse on birthright and offices for those who are translators” or called to translation in any way.
And it occurs to me, because this is central to my birthright and my office as scribe, that many of these people might be accused by a Queen of Heaven or a spirit that would seek to gaslight, and we would be accused of having a religious spirit because of our concern for accuracy and precision with the handling of the text.
The bottom line, there is a defilement on time, birthright, and office here for those of us who are bona fide called translators and scribes and so, given every English-speaking body is grateful to have the Sciptures in our own language, we might need to cleanse the office of Scribe and the birthright to handle the manuscripts of the text with care, precision, and accuracy, in order that we can more effectively do our work and with excellence.
Our job is translation of the manuscripts as they are (Hebrew and Aramaic for the Tanakh, and Greek for the New Testament) and not as we would wish them to be. And to handle and communicate and teach effectively, because we will be doubly called to account for what and how we teach.
We all have toys that we love getting and owning. For some of us those toys are cars. For some the towns are Legos. For others the toys are Sea-Doos, or dogs, or horses, or real estate, or mutual funds, or cookware.
My toy of choice, if I have extra money lying around, is books. Books on various aspects of the Scripture. Books about the background for a particular Bible text. Books about the social and rhetorical contexts. Books on the mindset of a Jew or Greek. Books that cover the archaeological discoveries. Books that dig into the language. Lexicons. Commentaries. Atlases. Books by scholars who are Spirit-filled AND have some serious theological chops. Books. And I like my books to have serious academic value behind them. I am one of the few people that I know of in my tribe that likes to multiply books by teachers that are precisely academic in nature because I like well-executed excellence in handling the text of Scripture, because I hear enough nonsense in pulpits. Except for my current pastors and five other congregations, including one friend of mine who pastors in Spartanburg. She preaches extraordinarily well.
Anyway, I digress.
One of my favorite scholars is Allen Ross, who is an expert at Leviticus and Psalms.
I have been working through Leviticus, and I came across the passage in Chapter 25 where It was written,
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land. If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his property. But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property.
And the Jubilee and the Redeemer concepts got me thinking, “what does Ross have to say about these ideas?”.
Jubilee
So, I pulled my book, Holiness To the Lord, and read this:
The land could not be permanently alienated from its original proprietor because all rights of ownership belonged to the Lord.
Allen P. Ross, Holiness To The Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 457.
That quote right there is all about stewardship and violating that principle is how we build the structure called the stronghold of ownership. God wanted his children to walk in complete freedom from carrying the burden of owning land, and as a result, the leveraging of assets to handle debts was permitted, but only for a season, after which liberty and release was declared.
Permanent alienation was not permitted. The people of Israel had learned intimately what it meant to be alienated.
The next focus of the chapter is the transference of property. The foundational principles for this section, and indeed for all dealings with land, is recorded in 25:23-24: the land belongs to God! The people of God did not own the land—or anything else for that matter. They were given the use of the land by God’s goodness and mercy.
Allen P. Ross, Holiness To The Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 461. Italics mine
This is an explicit textual reference to the principle of stewardship.
Engaging in regular release helps the released to recognize the reality of stewardship so that they do not practice ownership.
Redeemer
The first case [in which redemption could be made] is the person who had to sell property because of debt. The provision is made for a well-off relative to buy the field in order to keep it in the family (see Ruth 4). If the seller was later able to buy it back, then the price was established in accordance with its years of use. If the person was not able to buy it back, then it was returned in the Jubilee year. In this way the Lord served as the kinsman who restored the land to the original owner so that he or she could go out and live freely in it.
Allen P. Ross, Holiness To The Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 461. Italics mine
In Stewardship and Management, God is picturing Himself as the a God of Redemption through the years of release. He is also working at teaching his people in the ways of release and forgiveness. In the Old Testament. In the Law.
People who say that the God on the right hand side of the book spends His time apologizing for the wrathful, angry God on the left hand side of the book, are not reading passages like this. They are missing out on the Mercy, and the Kindness, and the humility of the King. As a result, they are squandering over half of the deposit of love given them by The God Of Both Sides of the Book.
“God is angry,” they say.
But God is here preaching release and sojourn, and how His children are strangers and sojourners with Him (Lev. 25:23).
Some days previous, news broke that Kanye West was only going to produce Christian music going forward….
And immediately the battle lines were drawn.
My cohort, Meagan Mozingo, wrote a well-crafted brief piece here. In it, she looked at both the for and the against, and was able to welcome whatever of him that truly has turned to the Lord of Glory.
And this illustrates the following reality: we are known to others by the fruit we bear; and fruit, unlike sowing, takes time from the earth to the harvest to spring forth. Fruit is a work of patience, of suspended judgment, of all the things at which we Prophet Americans suck.
Judging Based On History
He is saved….He is not saved….He is Illuminati….Don’t shut the door of the kingdom in his face….He is a baby Christian….He is corrupt….They have been holding worship services in his house since [insert date here]….
You know the drill: etch the lines in the sand, and pick a side, and kvetch at those who do not accord with you.
Even I admit I did some of that myself. And I judged people who were calling the “Illuminati” thing out.
But in the end, we are all only as precisely fast as the rate at which fruit comes out.
Saltwater and freshwater both take time to boil from the source of a spring to the place where they are seen. The hydrocycle moves what is unseen to the place where it is seen.
The Reality of Behavior
The truth is, a person’s testimony and the blood of the Lamb do not identify him or her as a follower of Jesus. Rather, it takes the fruit of the third item. Do they love their own life so much that the shrink back from death? Is the fruit of a commitment to Christ present? In order to follow Christ, I have to actually engage in the process of following Him.
Anything else is mere theatrics. As with Donald Trump and election cycles, so it is with being a follower of Christ, whether Jew or Christian. A real man or woman of character is not known by the promises they make on the campaign trail, where promises are expected. Rather, a real person of character is know by the day-to-day behavior that they string together in consistency.
San Jose is quite a significant city, spiritually, in the land that we know today as California.
I am going to take a rather large risk and hand y’all a piece of her design, track backward through a tiny piece of her history, and leave y’all what I think is going on with the city.
My Passion For Land Dynamics
I am extremely passionate about Father’s creation.
Not just humans, and not just animals, but all of creation.
I am also zealous for the idea that, regardless of what the enemy does in a situation, all that he does amounts only to perversion of the created order that God put in place, and the design God has intended for His many created entities.
God created time, land, communities, animals, plants, the sun, the moon, the stars, the fish, the birds, and rest. Indeed, He created everything that is.
Because of this creation, God also intends ALL of his creation, including land, to function in certain ways. And as you all know, different land masses, different countries, different counties, different cities, and different neighborhoods have different flavors. And God determined precisely and exactly on what lands each people group should dwell, per Acts 17:26.
He also put various treasures into each piece of land. The cacti of North America are only found in deserts. The Ruby mines, and the Gold mines, and the coal mines, and other mines are only found in certain areas. Same with other fossil fuels, and other resources.
To San Jose
And the same is true of San Jose.
In this post, there is a truth that has remained about San Jose that I am going to build out a little bit.
Earlier today, someone whose page I follow on Facebook posted some pix of San Jose and asked why certain representations of a given set of idols littered the city.
And it got me thinking. God does want to use the people of San Jose and the resources and treasures of the land of San Jose to expose and force the clowns of hell into a specific type of confrontation, just so He can make a public spectacle and disarm those critters.
History
San Jose, if you know, is the political, cultural, and economic center of Silicon Valley. San Jose has consistently been an icon of technology and material advancement. San Jose provides three things in order for the rest of the world to do their work well.
The computer chip.
Software to run the computers.
Venture capital, which deeply influences the means of production.
With respect to the third item, according to Wikipedia, one third of all venture capital firms in the United States are in Silicon Valley.
So What?
The most important theological question of all time is “so what?”
So, noting the title of this post, what did San Jose have to do with the Rothschilds?
And what about San Jose’s unique design has set it up to be used for a confrontation between the Lord and these global clowns that wish to control the means of production.
That can be traced to the cinnabar mines of San Jose.
Our attempts to simply the Lord’s complex nature and use a one-trick pony to fix even the most complex problem without the application of principles (“God, send revival to our nation” is our current idol these days) will end with our destruction in spiritual self-impoverishing behavior.
A question was asked on a forum of which I am part asking why God kept changing His name so much in Scripture.
I responded thus:
God didn’t change his name so much as He, through His additional names, REVEALED facets and aspects of His nature.
Because we are His kids, and His nature is so multi-layered and multi-faceted, He communicates a stream of revelation to us.
And we need all of those names so that we don’t pigeonhole the God of the Universe, and the God of the Hunt, and the God Who Plays Chess On a 27 Dimension Board, and the Ancient of Days, and the God of All Days, and the God of the Land Dynamics (Acts 17:26) into a little box that only occupies room enough for one single revelation of His nature.
He is a complex God who has COMPLEX solutions and a COMPLEX nature to helps us weave together millions of principles, in order to grow into sonship, in order to solve hella-complex problems.
The bottom line is we have a lot of names because we have been given a lot of tools to solve a big picture.
For example, if you think about the Wright brothers, when they were solving the problem of fixed-wing flight, they didn’t just throw an engine on a set of wings and hoped it would work. No.
They wove together millions of principles together in order to fly. They studied how birds maneuvered in the air in Dare County, NC, and observed kites. They considered wingform in order to warp the wings in the proper fashion in order to control lateral movmeent (the precursor to ailerons). They considered turning and rotation (rudders and elevators). They were forced to think of forward movement without the safety of a road that keeps a car from moving vertically. They though of thrust and lift, and proper materials needed so the craft would be light enough and sturdy enough.
And then they built their first craft as a glider. Flyer 1 was a glider.
Later wheels were added but the first takeoffs were done a long a fixed track after they successfully handled the gliding experiments.
And they also dealt with the human elements and dynamics. Quite effectively. Read David McCullough’s biography for a better understanding of the complexities in their work.
By way of illustration, God first taught us that he was Father and Creator and Lord before anything else, because we needed those aspects as a framework on which to build everything else.
So, the sum-up is God didn’t change His name. Rather, He revealed additional aspects of his nature and character.
I know I didn’t answer the question you asked, but I gave the response I did in order to help you consider a larger scope of things in Scripture. He wants to give you a wealth of understanding of Him as He is so you can tackle the problems you were made to tackle, understanding that you are a wealthy son instead of a poor slave.
Themis wants to help you pay for college and give you a way that seems right….
This crisis is real, and the deception is everywhere…
If it is so bad that we need to forgive the loans, why are we continuing to make them?
Dave Ramsey
[The student loan program]’s had an effect on the spiritual economy of this nation.
Dave Ramsey
Universal non-optional, cause-and-effect, relationships… When you violate the principle, you reap the effect of that violation.
Arthur Burk
Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.
Proverbs 13:11
Whoever oppresses the poor for his own increase and whoever gives to the rich, both come to poverty.
Proverbs 22:16
The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.
Proverbs 22:7
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous.
Proverbs 13:22
In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.
Proverbs 21:20
This is a spiritual problem, as much as, if not more than, a financial or emotional problem. There is a reason I posted the picture of Themis as the thumbnail for this. I had a real, personal fight with this program, which is a program that is a way which seems right to a man, but the end of it is destruction. Destruction of calling, destruction of destiny, and destruction of our own timelines.
Let me make this one really clear, because I am not remotely finished hitting this one, for those of us who are choosing to live paycheck to paycheck, thinking God will finance lifestyle fluff and stupid decision-making.
As an aside, this is not written to condemn the poor for their lack of gain, or for circumstances beyond their control, such as not being able to predict crisis or cancer.
Rather, this is written to correct the mindset that we have to borrow to finance college, and that college is as supposed to be universal, non-optional, or the key to one’s success. Given that the majority of us knew college was coming for us, our refusal to save up for and cashflow it, or our choice to devour what we had in order to finance a more expensive college, as in my case.
I financed $29,875.27 to get an English degree. I devoured my Florida Prepaid College Program, which would have given me full tuition to any public university in the State of Florida, and when that policy was cashed it, it resulted in approximately $800.00 per semester, which covered maybe 5% of my total tuition (translation: barely a drop in the bucket).
And I took on another $30,000.00 to pay for seminary.
And I was so stupid in doing it.
So, About Dave Ramsey and Arthur Burk…
So, who are Dave Ramsey and Arthur Burk, you might ask, and what do they have to do with each other, and more to the point, what do both have to do with this topic of the Student Loan crisis?
That can be answered with one word: principles.
Dave Ramsey is the President of the Lampo Group, a financial consulting firm in Metro Nashville, TN, and host of the #3 nationally-syndicated “Dave Ramsey Show”. He speaks five days weekly, three hours daily, pertaining to basic and biblical financial principles. Remember that last word, “principles”.
Arthur Burk, conversely, is the President of Sapphire Leadership Group, a Christian think-tank, founded in Los Angeles, CA, and presently headquartered in Spartanburg, SC. His driving passion is principles on the whole, and hunting for answers to questions that are not being asked. And he has an undying belief that the principles are there and present, if we will just unpack them. One of those principles deals with the three major spirits that are perversions of the members of the Holy Trinity.
In this case, we are being given counsel that is completely contrary to the counsel that the Holy Spirit would give, and that pertains to the spirit that is the perversion of the Holy Spirit.
We are dealing with a wholesale violation of principles. And we are dealing with a deception that says borrowing for the investment of college is okay.
The Mesmerizing Spirit
The Mesmerizing Spirit, a perversion of the Holy Spirit is best described as a pickpocket, and its job is to divert your attention from the work that Holy Spirit wants to do in you and others around you.
The Mesmerizing Spirit (MS) prevents you from seeing others the way Christ sees them in fullness and accuracy, and he keeps you from seeing the positive in others because he gets you distracted on one negative thing at the expense of recognizing an entire good package, or he will get you focused on the one good thing about someone, and as a result, you will miss the negative aspect you would otherwise recognize, and so you chose to throw caution to the wind.
It is because of the MS that we got Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, because with both men, we as a nation negated the truth that a candidate’s personal life is critical when it comes to the national effect that man would have on the national dialogue while in office.
And it is because of the Mesmerizing Spirit that we have this current crisis. We are deceived nationally into believe debt is okay, provided the ends are good.
And we are failing to ask ourselves why we still have this program if it is creating and adding to the enslavement of both the national populace and their creativity and birthrights.
Those who borrow are slaves to those who lend to them.
A man or a woman who is enslaved like Joseph, does not have a birthright, They are not allowed to execute their passion, the things they love, because their bread and provision goes to their master. The master in this case, is not just Sallie Mae and others. It is wickedness in high places that run these institutions (Ephesians 6:12)
One of those manifestations of the Mesmerizing Spirit is that we have swallowed the camel of the spirit of Themis.
What Does Themis Have to Do With the Crisis?
I used Themis to paint a picture. We have this picture of someone who is providing us with a verdict based on physical evidence weighed in scales.
The counsel of Themis provides you with something that seems right based on the evidence in front of you. As a result of that counsel that seems right, you move into a plan of execution, solely based on how the scales tip, regardless of emotions or gut feeling any other prevailing factors or evidence. The math may or may not justify it, but you are told it is an investment in your future to take out loans.
The problem is, spiritual discernment, gut, and intuition are not even part of the equation with the scales, and, as spiritual beings, we know deep down inside of us, that this is wrong.
The Bible calls “discernment of spirits” a gift of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:10) that is given to the body of Christ for our profit (1 Corinthians 12:7). Discernment is for our protection.
And we might not recognize it because we have shut our discernment and gut off and gone with what is only in the scales in the moment, or the emotions of “making an investment in our future”.
When we don’t see those negatives clearly in the light of God’s words or with God’s discernment, or our God-given gut, we settle for lower wisdom, and a lower solution, rather than the best and more disciplined solution.
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Hebrews 12:11
Translation: if you live like no one else now, later on you can live like no one else.
We still have to exercise caution because the difference “almost right counsel” and the “right counsel” can get subtle if we are not paying attention.
Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right.
Charles Spurgeon
We do not want the justice of that which seems right. We want what IS right.
Student loans only might seem right, but living, working, and educating debt-free IS right.
God did not create us to borrow in order to fulfill our callings, gang.
We were not meant to content ourselves and bind our futures to our capacity to borrow and enslave ourselves as a long-term end of itself.
Accordingly, the SLP program has twisted and dark roots, anchors, weights, and bindings that are federal in nature and designed to rob you at the enrichment of those in Congress and the bureaucracy.
Furthermore there is no mechanism for bankruptcy from these loans because they are federally insured by “a government who is well-known for they ability to spend and steward wisely”. (sarcasm)
Accordingly, The Paraclete’s Hammer wholeheartedly endorses the end of the Federally Insured Student Loan Program. If you are on Spotify, iTunes, or Google Play Music, this podcast from Dave Ramsey is something worth listening to.
The Student Loan Program, if you let it, is so badly-managed, and so predatory, that it will destroy you, your birthright, your destiny, and your future if you let it.
There are a whole lot of people who view your ability to take on debt as their ability to get rich.
If the borrower is slave to the lender, and slaves do not have a birthright, gang, then the principles that Arthur, Dave, myself, and others have pursued, when put together, would conclude that a borrower’s birthright is submerged while they are in debt, and is made subject to their ability to pay off debt. The enemy therefore has every interest in keeping us enslaved in every way that he can find, even if it means we are deceived into thinking we have to take on debt in order to go into our calling.
That is dancing around the deception instead of attacking it head-on, because the majority of momentum is against those who take on debt, and those who make greater allowances for debt will spend more, buy more, and run up higher bills than they can afford. At some point, the system is on the verge of collapse and is not sustainable.
Can a man scoop fire into his lap and not be burned?
Anthony O’Neal has also written a book on the topic of the alternatives. Please consult it as well.
Just about the fullness of my trumpet goes to the Teacher gift.
If there is one Teacher who doesn’t understand how valuable they are, I may not have done my job, or I may not have connected with that Teacher.
The last post I wrote on the Teacher may not have been thorough enough, but this one will be.
I was born in a Teacher city. Jacksonville, Florida. No matter how dingy that city gets, and no matter how horrible and backward people in Florida think Duval gets, it is home, and provides the backdrop for what happens to me every time I set foot in a Teacher city. Teacher cities are for unpacking the deepest riddles.
Teacher cities are for hitting the deepest things in the realms of God’s nature.
Teachers, though turtles, are for the love of the King.
Jerusalem is a Teacher city.
Teachers may drive you up a freaking tree with their devotion to orthodoxy, but they were hardwired for that.
Teachers may get inadequate or religious or full of crunchy rocks and religiosity or inflexible, but when we do not as a tribe uplift them in their beauty and fight the lie that they cannot emerge as a strong and safe place, that contributes to their downfall, even if it is not the main reason.
Teachers need Prophets who are full of Joy (the Prophet’s main fight in the fruit of the Spirit). Teachers need a Prophet who will hunt for their depths and show them their depths with tenderness and affection.
Teachers are, with the Mercy, the safest gifts. They can listen. To anything and everything.
Teachers are called and MADE for readiness. Feet shod with READINESS, not peace. R. E. A. D. I. N. E. S. S..
Teachers are the one gift that Arthur compared to a motorcycle. Dangerous when out of control. But a heck of a lot of fun when ridden correctly. And you can thread through a crapload of traffic, and move through any obstacle.
And you can park it wherever you want.
The thrill of the ride and the experience.
That was from Onyx Business DNA.
It is exhilarating for the rest of the body when the Teacher gets fully aligned.
So for those Teachers that judge your gift, your gift is my absolute favorite.
Yo are not permitted to judge your lovely design. Well, you are, but it will not end in anything good for you if you keep hammering and pounding on yourself.
Teachers are the slow tinkerers of the body, who are designed to venture in to the complex labyrinths of the body and IN THIR FINEST EXPRESSIONS, R. E. S. C. U. E. those who are trapped.
Teachers are the cave divers that have a rope tied to safety, and they take that rope and clutch their hurt friend and bring that friend back from the abyss when they are lost or misplaced. Teachers keep their heads about them when the other gifts are spun around.
Apparent Possible Teacher Organization
Teachers, not panicking, slowly ascend from every dive. They show you how to slow down, Exhorter, Prophet, Ruler, and intense Mercy. PADI is the consummate Teacher organization.
Bill Hewlett. Does anyone wonder why I keep talking about HP and why I will not shut up about Teachers? It is because of three things.
1. Bill encouraged tinkering and allowed people to use the 30,000 dollar piece of equipment to work on their side project at home. Teachers, in their precision, at their best, are the slow and deliberate tinkerers, designed to bring things to perfection in a way that the other gifts cannot. Sir Henry Royce, who fathered relentlessly and loyally, tinkered to his grave.
2. HP did not make their new hires sign promise-to-pay statements requiring them to pay back the training and schooling that they paid for for their new hires.
3. Bill and Dave CREATED AND FOSTERED AN ENVIRONMENT OF TRUST. They sowed trust into their peeps. As a result, they got it back in spades.
Teachers were made to cross-check the new thing against their old and established precedents.
Teachers, you were made for safety. The trees, the grassses, the roses, the Orange Blossom, the Stargazer Lilly, the Venus Flytrap, the bear dens and wolf lairs.
Were I not what I am, I would have most quickly gravitated towArd this gift.
I am about to write something that most Teachers might not going to understand, unless the have had their “encounter moment with the L-rd”. Most of the other gifts might scratch their heads. I am a Mercy, so I understand that level of rejection and a refusal to listen. I have also been accused of….not understanding….
It is really okay.
And there might be a blow-up of questions in my inbox about this. And I will listen and answer.
But I will not stop sounding the trumpet on how lovely every Teacher I know is.
The first person I connected with in this Tribe, from Boston, ended up being a Teacher. The second, a Prophet.
And without Teachers, reality ceases to include fixed-wing flight.
Thanks, Orville, for tinkering, and being found trustworthy with human lives. Figuring out how gliding works and kites and birds, before you stuck and engine on the Flyer.
Teachers, Houston, Launch Control, communication, transportation arteries and healthcare. There is a reason communication and transportation flows through Teacher communities. It is because methodical precision is REQUIRED for life.
Do not curse what Dad has put inside you, even when everyone else questions your obsessions with asking all the questions about all of the things.
Without Teachers, there is no revival beyond Los Angeles. Every city beyond L.A. that has experience a strong move of God, has to a town been Teacher.
Think about this…..gang. The erasure of Teacher, leads to an erasure of the preservation of life.
I just want to say welcome home. I have no idea what a day in your shoes looks or feels like. I have no idea what kind of trauma you have endured. I have no idea what makes you you. But I’m grateful that the power of redemption goes beyond the power of darkness. And I’m grateful that I know some heavy hitters for the kingdom that seek to rally behind you as you make waves in the spirit realm. So sing your song. Make your music for the King. I’m specifically praying for an infiltration of redemption throughout the entire Kardashian empire. And it’s believers who know how to leverage their sonship in the courts of heaven who have been given that level of authority to make these kind of governmental changes that are the vessels to make things shift here in the physical. It’s already happening. So I just want to let you know I’m rejoicing with the angels that you’re seated here at the table with Jesus. I’m glad you are posturing your heart toward truth and redemptive healing. And I’m backing you up, bro. You and any other person deep inside of you. All of you are welcome. I’m just going to say it again that I love seeing this level of redemption. For all things.
Since I first connected with the P/C movement in college, I have struggled with a number of issues. Things like elitism, condescension, pretenses of intimacy, control, manipulation, covering, the fivefold ministry, and many of these I have written about.
But, a pattern has arisen that I could not verbalize until just a few minutes ago.
And I finally put my finger on what it is….
What it is that drives so many of my generation from the usual corporate expressions of worship….
What it is that keeps us who want and yearn for relationships with groups of other believers….
What it is that keeps us from moving into depth one with another….
What keeps us from fulfilling any sense of duty to one another (Greek αλλαλους)…
And, maddeningly, what keeps us from becoming a body….
This quality has kept us from behaving cohesively…
It is a sense of entitled secrecy.
Presentation Vs. Vulnerable Reality
We have failed at humility, transparency, honesty, and straight-shooting, in favor of slicked-up presentation, and appearances. And my generation is sick of those presentations that do not find root in bare reality.
Because of a presentation that is nothing more than a distraction from what is really happening behind the scenes, I despise the phrase “brother” and do not usually reciprocate in kind.
That bald-faced fakery is why I despise being called Dave by anyone other than those who respect me.
Secrecy, and the hidden hand. Guile, shrewdness, and all kinds of glad-handing, verbal barfing account for my sickness with most of what passes for “fellowship” (gag!).
It is as if we are more interested in coming off or appearing to be real and tender and affectionate with each other than we are in actually BEING real and tender and affectionate with each other.
A Possible Reason Why
Perhaps part of the reason we do not engage in reality is that we have been so wounded and damaged (cue Plumb’s cut called “Cut” from Chaotic Resolve) that we are fearful of exposing ourselves again. We get castigated repeatedly for not belonging to the church, and for picking expressions of the church that are not part of established and recognized congregations, and yet, those traditional routes for corporate expression are precisely the routes that brought us to a place of shipwreck.
And we are sick of hearing expressions that tout the fivefold as the right expression for church leadership that have not apologized for the toxic abuse of the extant forms of the fivefold.
Back to the entitled secrecy.
Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Todd Bentley, and The Passion “Translation”
Jimmy Swaggart helped initiate Jim Bakker’s downfall.
Jerry Falwell, evidently offered Bakker one thing in exchange for his help and then did another.
Swaggart, the second time he was caught in infidelity, said “The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.”
Todd Bentley never came clean with what happened to his first wife, and why he was justified biblically in divorcing her.
And finally, when straightly asked to identify and name the members of his translation team, Brian Simmons refused to. He talks about a translation team, by calling himself a “lead translator” and then fails to identify the group he is leading. By comparison, the translation teams for the NIV, the NLT, the NKJV, the ESV, the NRSV, the NASB, and even the KJV are all known.
I don’t care how you slice it, that sequence of events where we evade those for whom we are responsible is a twofold sin. First, it is secrecy of things that should be brought to the light, and secondly, it is either arrogance or fear of rejection that will create a natural gulf between leader and followers.
It’s as if, in each of these situations, there is either a an elitism or a massive wound that the leader is guarding, that keeps Charismatics or Pentecostal leaders from putting any “skin in the game” when it comes to humility or vulnerability or following through with Paul’s injunction to “be subject one to another out of reverence for Christ.” Where is the subjection that is the leader’s portion to those he is supposed to be serving?
Does anyone wonder why we are so riled up when Todd Bentley’s name is mentioned? It has diddly squat to do with a demonic spirit of vengeance and zip to do with our opposing his being restored to ministry. Instead, it has EVERYTHING to do with his refusal to repent and expose this crap, and be truly and biblically restored to his G-d and his family.
This right here is my guff with the Passion “Translation”. The refusal of a man to be vulnerable and authentic with those he is leading and placing the manuscript of the New Testament in alignment with the Greek originals.
Greek Is Only The Language of The Mind and Philosophy
The marketing rhetoric of the Passion lands as if Greek is a language of the mind and is devoid of emotion and passion. Let me say this. The nation of Greece has the Redemptive Gift of Prophet. When was the last time you knew of a Prophet by Redemptive Gift that was devoid of emotion and and zeal and heart. Are Prophets not the volcanoes of the body of Christ?
To sum up, I have witnessed a pattern in Charismatic and Pentecostal circles where, when leaders do put something forth for us to grasp, it costs them very little; it is a plastic extension, but not part of them. They extend very little of their own flesh and blood to us, and as a result, we never get to know them as they really are and there is therefore little intimacy, while we parrot “brother” and “we need to connect” and other triteisms. But the end result is, instead of the real unity and vulnerability to which they exhort us all, a farce and a show.
Gunning For Real κοινονια and στοργε
κοινονια is the Greek word for “community”.
στοργε is the Greek word that is described by maternal affection for a child.
You cannot make much of your accomplishments when you won’t also accept a complimentary amount of the priority of humility and submission to those whom you serve. If there is no risk, there will be no reward. If there is plastic risk, then there will be a plastic participation reward. If there is the risk of gold, silver, and precious gems, then the reward will be that valuable.
They are practicing terminal non-reality and expecting a massive harvest of community.
Be not deceived. G-d is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, that also shall he reap.
If you plant corn, you reap corn. If you plant plastic, don’t expect cotton and life.
Expecting to reap much without embracing pain, vulnerability, humility, and submission to those whom you lead, the end result will usually be tragedy.
